Lot 36

Rule of St. Benedict and the Constitutions of the Canons Regular of Arrouaise, in Latin, decorated manuscripts on vellum [England, second half of the twelfth century]

Estimate

12,000 - 18,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

two volumes (a) 48 leaves, 147mm. by 105mm., complete, collation: i-iv^{10, v^{8, single column, 26 lines in brown ink in an elegant early gothic script, rubrics in brown or red, 2- to 5-line initials in metallic red or green, many with contrasting penwork and decorative dots, the larger ones containing scrolling patterns within their ascenders,}} one large initial (fol.11r; 8-line) in same, early medieval dry-point sketches of a man and a dog chasing a hare on fol.31v, remnants of a document in dry-point gloss on last endleaf; (b) a gathering of 8 leaves from the end of the previous volume, complete, with the original endleaves of the volume (fols.6-8) with sketches for initials, pen trial alphabets and phrases, and a fifteenth-century inscription in red ink (perhaps "Ociiborn"), small area cut from upper border of fol.1 (with no affect to text), some small stains in both volumes, else excellent condition, both modern red leather over pasteboards

Provenance

provenance

1. It is virtually inconceivable that a copy of any of the constitutions of the Canons Regular of Arrouaise would be produced in anything other than a house of that rare order. The order was founded c.1090 in Arrouaise, but only began to expand in the early decades of the twelfth century. It was especially rare in England, and only a handful of houses were founded during the twelfth century: Bourne (founded c.1138), Missenden (founded 1133), Dorchester, Oxfordshire (founded 1140), Lilleshall (founded from Dorchester in 1148), Notley, near Aylesbury (founded 1162) and Lesnes, near Bexley (founded 1178).

2. C.W.H. Sotheby, and by descent to Col. H.G. Sotheby; his sale in our rooms, 24 July 1924, lot 200.

5. Solomon Pottesman (1904-78); his sale in our rooms, 11 December 1979, lot 35, to Alan Thomas.

6. Bergendal MS.102; bought by Joseph Pope from Thomas in December 1980: Bergendal catalogue no.102; Stoneman, 'Guide', p.204.

Catalogue Note

text

These volumes unite one of the most widely dispersed monastic texts with one of the least common. The Rule of St. Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia (480–547), has been the backbone of communal monastic life for fifteen centuries. Disturbed by the immorality of Rome c.500, Benedict gave up his studies and chose the life of an ascetic in a cave near Subiaco. He attracted converts to his way of life, and subsequently founded the monastery of Monte Cassino in 529, originally composing his rule for the fledgling community there. Despite the universal distribution of the text throughout the Benedictine and Cistercian communities of Europe, copies of it are surprisingly few on the market, and those of the early Middle Ages almost unheard of. The Schoenberg database records only seven other copies on the market in the last century and a half, all fifteenth-century except a copy made for French Benedictine nuns c.1100, offered by Lathrop Harper cat.1 (1952), no.1.

Nineteen statutes from the Constitutions of the Canons Regular of Arrouaise fill the last gathering of the original volume. They discuss monastic life, lay and religious novices, the chapter house and the refectory, and the selection of statutes here conforms to group 2 of L. Milis' recent edition (vol.xx in the series Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 1970, pp.xxx-xxxviii). Milis traced only six manuscripts, not including the present example, only one of which is of similar age to the present copy, and none of which are from English houses of the order. It is thus significant that the present manuscript, dating from the very earliest years of the order in England, has a statute not included in Milis' edition (here fol.1v opening, "Quid conversi debeant discere ..."), and this may well be a unique textual witness to an English variant of the constitutions.